Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has announced in a press release that $200 million will be available for expansion of training for health care professionals, in the form of support grants, loans, loan repayment, and scholarships. The Secretary says these funds should train around 8,000 students and credentialed health professionals by the end of fiscal year 2010. The funds are part of the $500 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and directed to HHS' Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), to address workforce shortages.

"Health care reform cannot happen without an adequate supply of well-trained, well-distributed providers," said Secretary Sebelius in the press release. "These ARRA funds provide targeted investments in primary care, nursing, faculty development, and equipment purchases that will shore up the workforce as we prepare for reform."

"Our health professions programs have been significantly underfunded these past few years," said Mary Wakefield, Ph.D., R.N., administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, in the release. "These funds will help us begin to rebuild the infrastructure that is so essential to producing the number of skilled health professionals the Nation needs."

According to the press release, the $200 million will go to the following areas:

--$80.2 million for scholarships, loans, and loan repayment awards to students, health professionals, and faculty. In these funds, $39 million will be earmarked for nurses and nurse faculty, $40 million for disadvantaged students in health professions, and $1.2 million to health professions faculty from disadvantaged backgrounds.
--$50 million in grants to health professions training programs. These funds will be used to purchase equipment for program expansion and improving the quality of training.
--$47.6 million to support primary care training programs for residents, medical students, physician assistants, dentists and individuals, many of whom will practice in underserved areas.
--$10.5 million to strengthen the public health workforce through traineeships and increasing the number of individuals trained through preventive medicine and dental public health residencies.
--$10.2 million to increase the diversity of the health professions workforce.
--$1.5 million to support the efforts of state professional licensing boards in reducing barrier to telemedicine.

HRSA will use a competitive process to award the funds, some to be made in the coming months. Funding opportunities for some programs will be announced over the next several months, to give applicants adequate time to prepare materials.
The remaining $300 million in ARRA workforce funds will expand HRSA's National Health Service Corps, providing scholarships and loan repayment for primary care providers who serve in health professional shortage areas. The HRSA also received $2 billion through ARRA to expand health care services to low-income and uninsured individuals.

Adapted from a press release by HHS.